"Any kind of popular trend is infinitely more wholesome than listening to old records. It's more important that people know that some kind of pleasure can be derived from things that are around them - rather than to catalogue more stuff - you can do that forever"----Harry Smith ^^^^^^^^^^ "Gather ye rosebuds while ye may / Old Time is still a-flying / And this same flower that smiles today/Tomorrow will be dying"---Robert Herrick

Friday, March 27, 2015

Psychochronography

"The subtitle of "A Four-Colour Psychochronography" refers to the idea of psychochronography, an offshoot of the artistic concept of psychogeography. Psychogeography is a practice originally developed by the Situationist International as part of their efforts to forcibly dismantle the established social order. Psychogeography is the study of how physical spaces impact social, cultural, and personal lives. Its central technique is what is called the derivé, or drift, in which one wanders through an urban area according to some idiosyncratic logic that causes one to cut against the usual lines and paths traced.Psychochronography applies this notion to our internal landscape. Taking seriously Alan Moore's notion of ideaspace, psychochronography suggests that we can wander through history and ideas just as easily as we can physical spaces, and that by observing the course of such a meander we can discover new things about our world." - Philip Sandifer, http://www.philipsandifer.com/p/the-last-war-in-albion.htmlinteresting concept, although a lingering philistine reflex with in me toys with idea that, just as "psychogeography" is a fancy way of saying "taking a walk", "psychochronography" is a fancy way of saying..... what exactly? Writing? thinking (and thinking aloud)? musing? given that the vast bulk of our pondering must concern the past - our own past, the collective past - because the future is unknown to us - because wherever the present may be going, all that we can really apprehend mentally is the processes that brought this present into being...Our internal landscape is 90 percent memory plus unrequited longings, anxieties / wishes re. the future.

However, it is certainly easier to "walk through history" than ever before, this is true - the vast archival materials of the internet